Category: history

LCMM to investigate 1812 battle

Posted on September 26, 2011 |

• Vergennes
• 1812
• battle
• history
• ship
• vergennes

By Ian Trombulak

VERGENNES — Almost 200 years ago, Commodore Thomas MacDonough won a crucial naval battle in the War of 1812 that drove the British — the world’s greatest naval force at the time — from the Plattsburgh, N.Y., battle site back into Canada, allowing the United States to retain a larger piece of northern territory when a peace treaty was signed two months later.

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VBT pedals into fifth decade

Posted on June 30, 2011 |

• Bristol
• history
• Vermont Bike Touring

By Andrew Stein

BRISTOL — When John Freidin founded Vermont Bicycle Tours in the early 1970s he never imagined that 40 years later the company would grow to annually serve 5,000 travelers in 26 countries. He didn’t know of any businesses at the time that were based on bicycle touring.

A young Middlebury College professor of history, Freidin recently recalled that he was trying to escape the world of academia. On the suggestion of a colleague, he and a fellow professor took an overnight bike trip through Vermont.

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Local historians revisit Douglass's fiery 1843 visit

Posted on April 25, 2011 |

• Middlebury
• Frederick Douglass
• history
• Rokeby Museum

By John Flowers

MIDDLEURY — As director of the Rokeby Museum, Jane Williamson knows a lot about how slaves moved covertly from South to North via the Underground Railroad.

But as the nation prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War that would end slavery, Williamson wants people to know what Addison County residents — and national figure Frederick Douglass — did overtly in an effort to end indentured servitude before hostilities began on April 12,1861.

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